I have to admit I'm not much in way of pastry or baking arts. My oven and I don't get along unless roastin of meat or potato is involved. Cakes for friends' birthdays are usually one layer deals -- over the summer I made a gateau victoire and served it with chantilly creme and LOTS of wild strawberries (a weird ingmar bergman thing)...the real treat was the bottle of tawny port i brought along, so really, the last birthday cake I made was a bottle of port.

but that rococco cake sounds delicious...maybe worth the effort. Thanks for the tip guys!

Over-the-top hazelnut cake. I made 2 hazelnut tortes (recipe found at Epicurious.com), sliced each into 2 layers & sprinkled with hazelnut liqueur. Used Nutella hazelnut-chocolate spread between the layers, and frosted with a not-too-sweet whipped cream based frosting. Sprinkled toasted chopped hazelnuts & chocolate curls on top. Owing to the whipped cream based frosting, I don't think the cake would keep especially well, but it wasn't around long enough for me to find out! I was aiming for something less sweet and more complex than the traditional white bakery cake (not too hard to accomplish), with more appeal to the adult palate. We served it with coffee.